Pedro de la Rosa tips HRT to star in Canadian Grand Prix after qualifying progress

De la Rosa outqualified both Marussias for the first time this year, putting his HRT in 21st position. The Spanish driver finished nearly half a second ahead of Timo Glock. De la Rosa was also eight tenths of a second faster than his team-mate Narain Karthikeyan.

The Spaniard believes HRT's top speed will allow him to fight properly in Sunday's race.

"I'm very happy, for myself and the entire team," he said. "In Monaco we completed a good qualifying and here it was even better. The objective was to achieve our fastest lap and we did it. A 1m17.4s is good, but we could have done better on the last set of tyres but I wasn't able to improve on my previous lap.

"We've been quick the whole weekend, it wasn't a coincidence and we should do well tomorrow. With the soft tyres we're very consistent and, what's most important is that we're very quick on straights so we have a chance to overtake others and it will be difficult to overtake us.

"Ahead of tomorrow's race I think we can fight with anyone because our car has good speed and is stable when braking, so we aim to make the most out of this."

Karthikeyan admitted he needs to raise his game in qualifying after finishing at the bottom of the times again.

"It was a messy qualifying for me," he said. "On the first set of tyres I encountered a lot of traffic and on my quickest lap I got all the sectors right and I made a mistake coming into the last corner which cost me six tenths.

"My qualifying has been weak this year and I need to improve this. But we have a good pace and tomorrow we will fight with our main rivals to try and get a good result."